The Border Shakedown
[Guest post by DRJ]
According to Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, President Obama won’t secure the border until Americans agree to amnesty:
“On June 18, 2010, Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl told the audience at a North Tempe Tea Party town hall meeting that during a private, one-on-one meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office, the President told him, regarding securing the southern border with Mexico, “The problem is, . . . if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’” [Audible gasps were heard throughout the audience.] Sen. Kyl continued, “In other words, they’re holding it hostage. They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’”
Sen. Kyl also said he reminded President Obama that the President and the Congress has an obligation, a duty, to secure the border.”
Red State posts the video from YouTube. The relevant portion starts at 4:40 3:20.
Imagine what the Obama Administration could withhold until Americans pay up with their money or their votes.
— DRJ
Breaking News – Obama Blocking Progress!!!!!
daleyrocks (1d0d98) — 6/20/2010 @ 11:07 amWhat Obama is doing is criminal, it is by definition breaking the responsibility to defend the country against all foes, foreign and domestic. He deserves to be impeached and found guilty, even if it does mean Biden would be President.
Is the President King as long as his minions are the majority in the House and Senate?
Does anybody, state or federal, have standing to bring suit against the President for violating his oath of office?
Not that I wish harm, but maybe someone in the MSM doing a story on the chaos on the border will be among the kidnap victims in Arizona.
MD in Philly (5a98ff) — 6/20/2010 @ 11:14 amBarry’s brazenness in the face of his contiuing dereliction of duty is quite amazing. When more than 70% of the country want a secure border, you would think he would keep schtum on this issue. Proof, as if you needed more, that he is hell-bent on creating as much damage as possible secure in the knowledge that he will only serve one term. And I use the term “serve” very loosely.
Gazzer (d79016) — 6/20/2010 @ 11:20 am“…Is the President King…”
Comment by MD in Philly — 6/20/2010 @ 11:14 am
Exactly! He can do this just as long as he knows that no Bill of Impeachment will come out of the House Cmte on the Judiciary.
I recommend canned goods/MRE’s, hydration packs, and sufficient ammo for being in the field for days/weeks on end when the border erupts into absolute chaos.
Everyman a Rifleman!
AD - RtR/OS! (71ba66) — 6/20/2010 @ 11:23 amIs anyone the least bit surprised at this? Of course they want amnesty first. Their thinking is likely that then securing the border wouldn’t be needed anyway because we’d basically not have one anymore.
FYI the relevant part starts at 3:20. The whole thing is 4:40.
Miguelito (69d7b0) — 6/20/2010 @ 11:27 amThanks, Miguelito. I’ll fix it.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 6/20/2010 @ 11:30 amBig O not thinking
ColonelHaiku (2ce3dc) — 6/20/2010 @ 11:35 amfuture of America
thinking of 2012
ColonelHaiku (2ce3dc) — 6/20/2010 @ 11:36 amofIt’s fitting that news of this comes out since it marks almost the one-year anniversary of the controversy caused by the White House’s reaction to the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelayo. (Hard to believe a full year has passed by.) That was one of the first major moments when I realized just how screwed up — and truly ass-backwards — and ultra-liberal Obama really was. And I’m not even mentioning about Obama/Clinton/Holder happily choosing to sue Arizona over its recent legislation on immigration.
Of course, I always had suspicions that Obama had a ideologically bankrupt core, but there are varying degrees of just how bankrupt a person can be. I was willing to give the guy a tiny bit of benefit of the doubt because of the nature of the socio-political process — and things like opinion polls — and how that may moderate a person’s behavior. But I should have realized that leftism in general tends to make people shameless, and that Obama sitting in the pews of a “Goddamn America” church for several years really could be properly defined as the essence of the man.
Mark (411533) — 6/20/2010 @ 11:56 amI TOLD YOU SO!
he’s not, nor has he ever been, “a good man”.
he’s an anti-American scumbag, out to do as much damage to our country as he can as long as he’s in office.
not only that, but there is no doubt in my mind that he, or, more accurately, his handlers, will do anything they can to keep him there.
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 6/20/2010 @ 12:08 pmSigh….
Why do none of you get it?
There will always be an enormous number of people wanting to enter the US to get work, as long as the US is economically better off then their home countries.
If they can not get here legally, they will come here illegally.
Pretending otherwise is pretending that King Knut could order the high tide to stop flowing in.
So you can
1) get Mexico and the rest of Central America into a state resembling the US–not bloody likely, at least in the short term
2) turn the US into a third world country–well, if you let Obama get his way…but seriously, I will assume that none of you want that
3)have true immigration reform that legally allows all, or at least the vast majority, of those people, to come and work in this country.
4) Pretend that you can actually keep all those people out, or impose a police state to actually enforce the rules. Arizona has taken the initial steps towards the latter approach.
Obama is not advocating real immigration reform; as far as I know, no major politician is doing so.
Real immigration reform does not equal amnesty–don’t need amnesty since all those people could simply return to their home countries and return legally Real immigration reform does not equal access to welfare benefits or citizenship in the near term–you could easily require new immigrants to wait a certain number of years before they could receive any such benefits (or prohibit them from ever getting it) and wait an even longer number of years before they could apply for citizenship.
To actually secure the borders requires an open borders immigration policy, something no one seems to be working for now.
BTW, will someone remind me which of the 9/11 hijackers got into this country by sneaking across the Mexican border?
kishnevi (a46980) — 6/20/2010 @ 12:11 pm3)have true immigration reform that legally allows all, or at least the vast majority, of those people, to come and work in this country.
So, you want us to import millions of illiterate manual laborers who are filing workers comp claims by the age of 40 ? Some by the age of 25. I review the WC claims. Most claim a second grade education and are illiterate in Spanish. You know the withholding of benefits will never work. That’s what Prop 187 was about.
Mike K (82f374) — 6/20/2010 @ 12:18 pm4) Pretend that you can actually keep all those people out, or impose a police state to actually enforce the rules. Arizona has taken the initial steps towards the latter approach.
So if this administration were to actually enforce the immigration laws already on the books (which 1070 essentially mirrors) that would be equivalent to a police state?
Dana (1e5ad4) — 6/20/2010 @ 12:43 pmToo funny!
“At Friday’s State Department news conference, the acting deputy spokesman, Mark C. Toner, was asked if Hillary Clinton had misspoken when she told an Ecuadorian TV station that the Obama administration would be suing Arizona over its immigration-enforcement law. Toner responded that her words “stand for themselves,” which produced the following colloquy — excerpted here both for its comedy silver and as a contribution to the debate on whether Hillary has done “an incredible job” as secretary of state:
QUESTION: … [the] Arizona governor said in a written release, “To learn of this lawsuit through an Ecuadorian interview with the Secretary of State is just outrageous. There’s no way to treat – this no way to treat the people of Arizona.” Is there an apology here?
MR. TONER: The Secretary responded to a question she was asked in an interview. This is obviously an issue of great concern and resonance domestically, but it is as well in the hemisphere. … Her words speak for themselves. And I would just defer you to the Justice Department …
QUESTION: So you’re saying she did not misspeak?
MR. TONER: I’m saying her words stand for themselves. …
QUESTION: You say that her words stand for themselves, but that doesn’t answer the question of whether she misspoke or spoke too early. Can you answer that? …
MR. TONER: – I’d defer you to the Department of Justice.
QUESTION: I think you would want to refer me, not defer me.
MR. TONER: I said refer you. …
QUESTION: But the question is … about what the Secretary said.
MR. TONER: And I will say for the third time that her words speak for themselves.
QUESTION: In other words, that you don’t –
MR. TONER: Not in other words.
QUESTION: You don’t want to –
MR. TONER: Not in other words. And I would also say, as I just spoke, is that the President, the Secretary, others in this Administration have said the long-term solution to this is comprehensive immigration reform.
QUESTION: All right. Well, let’s [talk] about the short-term solution to the Arizona situation, not the long-term solution. Let’s talk about what she actually said in the interview. Did she misspeak?
MR. TONER: Her words speak for themselves.
QUESTION: That doesn’t answer the question.
MR. TONER: No. She – her words speak for themselves.
QUESTION: She did not misspeak, so the Administration is intending to sue Arizona?
MR. TONER: Her words speak for themselves.
QUESTION: Is the Administration intending to sue Arizona?
MR. TONER: Defer you to the Justice Department on –
QUESTION: Refer.
MR. TONER: – the next steps legally. I said refer.
QUESTION: You’re saying defer.
MR. TONER: Am I saying defer? Well, anyway, go ahead.
QUESTION: … You know, State sends us to Justice, Justice goes back to State, and so on and so on. Was she – did she mean to say maybe that the Justice Department was studying this lawsuit or –
MR. TONER: Look, I’m not going to parse the Secretary’s words….
QUESTION: So it’s no misstatement in any way. What she said –
MR. TONER: They stand –
QUESTION: — she stands by it.
MR. TONER: They stand for themselves …
QUESTION: Okay, well then, you know, this is a daily briefing. So is the Administration intending to sue Arizona over this –
MR. TONER: That’s a matter for the Department of Justice.
QUESTION: Is that perhaps not the answer that she should have given when she was asked the question?
MR. TONER: Matt, her words speak for themselves, okay?”
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/richman/316926
GeneralMalaise (2ce3dc) — 6/20/2010 @ 12:52 pmMike K–
out of curiosity, what percentage of those WC claims were legit?
The fact that all those claimants had almost no education should clue you in to the truth of what I’m saying: if life is better here than back home, they will come, and you can’t do anything to stop them.
I think a Prop 187 on the national level would work.
Dana–to actually enforce the immigration laws on our books would require a police state apparatus. There is no other way to do it–to check people’s papers on the street (and not just in the border states), to make sure businesses are not employing illegals, etc. etc.
kishnevi (da26af) — 6/20/2010 @ 1:01 pmAnd of course, like all police states, it still would not completely do the job, just create better smugglers and ID forgers.
So using kishnevi’s logic, we may as well disband the police force because they will never catch ALL muderers or robbers or rapists or speeders, as we “can’t do anything to stop them.” Note the deliberately inflammatory framing of the argument as ceating a police state. What does that harken back to, I wonder? How about we create a state where police are free to enforce all the laws on the books, as is their sworn remit.
Gazzer (d79016) — 6/20/2010 @ 1:19 pmout of curiosity, what percentage of those WC claims were legit?
What I see are a lot of cases where the injured worker has a legit injury but never gets well. Back pain is the classic case but I see lots of women who end up with “fibromyalgia.” There is a sort of conspiracy going on between crooked doctors and claimants in which the doctors says (In Spanish), “If you let me do these procedures on you, I will keep certifying you as disabled.”
Many of the procedures are dangerous.
If you review claims for a few months, you know who the crooks are. Of course, the applicant attorneys seek them out. The employers will tend to seek out docs who minimize chronic injuries but it is far less common and any injured worker who thinks he is being sloughed off, and some are, he gets an attorney and we are off to the races.
I think if you build the fence and slow the influx, especially the seasonal influx by people who have no intention of staying and becoming citizens, you will solve enough of the problem to start thinking about amnesty.
The problem is almost as bad with legal immigration. The ICE is incompetent more egregiously with potential legal immigrants and those are the ones who would contribute and not become a public burden. That is the real disgrace. There was a budget hearing last year in which ICE testified that they did not want to accelerate the legal immigration process because their budget was dependent on the annual fees paid by applicants.
Mike K (82f374) — 6/20/2010 @ 1:20 pmkishnevi,
It doesn’t requires a police state to curb illegal immigration anymore than it requires a police state to curb crime. You do both by making the effort, not by throwing up your hands.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 6/20/2010 @ 1:24 pmYou require employers to vet all employees and applicants through e-Verify, and jail those employers with illegal alien employees who either don’t, or hire anyway.
AD - RtR/OS! (71ba66) — 6/20/2010 @ 1:47 pmOnce the ability to acquire a job illegally is taken out of the equation, the influx of illegals will mostly dry up.
Also, LEGAL immigration needs to be reformed by downgrading family unification as a policy, and upgrading the requirement for skilled labor.
If we need unskilled labor, that’s what teen-agers and/or college students are for.
if life is better here than back home, they will come, and you can’t do anything to stop them.
I see – so why actually try to defend our borders, and let’s just open ‘er up and let everyone come in and flood our population centers with millions of illegal immigrants. I find your attitude weirdly defeatest and also insane.
Dana–to actually enforce the immigration laws on our books would require a police state apparatus.
Which means (at least in your bizarro world) that EVERY OTHER DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY employs police – state tactics to keep their borders sovereign. Now please tell us why Canada, all of Europe and most of Asia are all police states, since all of them patrol their borders and jail those who try to illegally immigrate there. Not to mention Mexico and most of Latin America as well, but why quibble at this point?
Dmac (e47b06) — 6/20/2010 @ 2:10 pmAlso, please tell us which other Democratic nations allow their borders to be as porous as ours is at present, and why we should be completely different in our approach.
Dmac (e47b06) — 6/20/2010 @ 2:11 pmWhat kishnevi avoids mentioning is that we wouldn’t need a police state: we’d just need to get politicians to do their jobs instead of being corrupt and supporting illegal activity because they hope to profit in one way or another.
Unfortunately, few others are willing to do things that could force politicians to do their jobs. Simply saying here or elsewhere that they should do their jobs isn’t enough. You have to find smart, experienced trial lawyers or similar to “cross-examine” them over this issue at their public appearances. I’m not talking about standard townhalls like you’ve seen so far: I mean a “cross-examination” designed to discredit.
In case anyone is willing to do some actual work, promote the plan at my name’s link.
When you want to actually do something (af204a) — 6/20/2010 @ 2:11 pmkishnevi is an adherent to the “Smuggler’s Blues” philosophy of law enforcement (“you ask any DEA man, he’ll tell you there’s nothing we can do”). But, what Glenn Frey fails to note is that we always can do something — if not ‘eliminate’, we can at least severely curb certain illegal activities. There’s something of the liberal quest for Utopia in kishnevi’s words; if it isn’t equal for all, it must be unfair for some. Yep, that’s life.
It isn’t the mere fact that the economy is “better” here that draws people in; it’s the fact that life — opportunities for education, crime levels, etc — is so much worse there. Is the economy the basis for their woes? Yep, but let’s not ignore the other factors. Maybe they could offer more non-illegal-drugs based goods and services if they had less political corruption and a better education system. kishnevi seems to be of the pessimistic opinion that either, A) they will never improve, therefore we are stuck with all of their refugees; or, B) they are incapable of improving without our help, no doubt in the form of unfettered billions in foreign aid.
Icy Texan (a2701d) — 6/20/2010 @ 2:12 pm_________________________________________
3)have true immigration reform that legally allows all, or at least the vast majority, of those people, to come and work in this country.
Just as I used to believe that, for example, President Herbert Hoover was a big-business, laissez-faire, let-them-eat-cake Republican meanie who made the Great Depression really miserable — when, in fact, he actually was more of a tax-and-spend liberal — I not long ago fell for the notion that the Bracero program of the past, or instituting a legal channel for people to enter the US as guest workers, from Mexico in particular, would be a good adjunct to merely sealing off the border.
After reading the following, I’ve changed my opinion:
What’s interesting is we’ve gone from the extreme of this…
…to the extreme of the idiotic White House suing the state of Arizona for enacting legislation that is a thousand times softer and squishier than what took place during the 1950s. Hell, even public discourse over the past several decades has become so infused with nonsensical politically correct babble, that the idea of a government program, no less, adopting a title with “wetback” in it boggles the mind.
That’s why I say to have been a card-carrying liberal decades ago was one thing. To be a liberal in today’s era means one truly is an ultra-liberal, if not a flat-out kook.
Mark (411533) — 6/20/2010 @ 2:35 pmDana–to actually enforce the immigration laws on our books would require a police state apparatus.
kishnevi, if you look up the definition of police state, you will find:
country repressively controlled by its government: a country in which the government uses police, especially secret police, to exercise strict or repressive control over the population
Do you really believe that is what the Feds would be doing if they finally chose to enforce the laws on the book?
By framing it in such inflammatory rhetoric, you easily and conveniently place the burden of inappropriateness on the state rather than the individual who actually breaks the law by entering the country illegally.
And if you do believe this, what do you have to say regarding every other country that protects it’s borders? Are they all the equivalent of a police state?
Dana (1e5ad4) — 6/20/2010 @ 3:32 pmDoes anyone expect the Islamic Marxist POS in the white house to care about America. He’s nothing more than Soros’s boy toy and does what he directs.
Scrapiron (996c34) — 6/20/2010 @ 4:46 pmDana–I said that to actually enforce the immigration laws on the books, would require a police state: exercising strict control to make sure that everyone who was here was here legally.
I’m not saying the Feds would ever come close to that; but it’s not possible to enforce the laws without such a regime in place. “Secure the borders” is really a demand to initiate a police state.
Also notice that the position most of you are taking is to justify government intervention in the market (in this case the labor market). Are you sure y’all are conservatives? Any immigration regime that allows fewer immigrants to enter then there are jobs available for them is doomed to failure; which is why the Bracero program failed (and notice why it was ended: on pure protectionist grounds).
Suggest the lot of you review your economics until you understand that the labor market is a market like any other, and just like any other market, the less government regulation and involvement, the better.
kishnevi (2c3adb) — 6/20/2010 @ 6:51 pm“Are you sure y’all are conservatives?”
Nice try – The market would still set the wages, absent the artificial government and union imposition of minimum wages where applicable, just without a constant flow of illegal labor. No contradiction in principles there.
daleyrocks (1d0d98) — 6/20/2010 @ 6:59 pm“just like any other market, the less government regulation and involvement, the better”
Suggest you review as well, Sport.
daleyrocks (1d0d98) — 6/20/2010 @ 7:00 pmComment by kishnevi — 6/20/2010 @ 6:51 pm
Is France a “police state”?
They have the ability, and can when they need to, to track every non-French citizen that crosses her borders. Our ICE, has no idea where people are, especially those that overstay their visas.
Is Mexico a “police state”?
AD - RtR/OS! (71ba66) — 6/20/2010 @ 7:44 pmA non-citizen cannot work in Mexico without government permission, and they enforce it.
Does that make them a police state; and if so, why can’t they do something about the cartels?
…Congress, in the Simpson-Mazzoli Act of 1986, laid the groundwork for the requirement that to work in this country, you had to possess the proper “papers” – A Green Card.
AD - RtR/OS! (71ba66) — 6/20/2010 @ 7:55 pmAll that it takes is to ensure that employers are respecting that law, and be willing to prosecute (in a meaningful manner) those that don’t, or won’t.
AD-RtR/OS
You seriously the want the amount of government control and intervention found in France and Mexico?
I’ll repeat again: to actually enforce the current immigration law regime, you would need to put into place a police state apparatus.
Also, notice the amount of people moving to France and Mexico for the sake of getting a better job….
And for Daleyrocks–immigration controls are government intervention/regulation of the labor market. The government is (trying) to control the supply side of the labor market. And like any government attempt to control a market, it simply screws things up further. (The Bracero program was a good example of that. And notice that JFK ended it for purely protecctionist reasons.)
kishnevi (7e1f91) — 6/20/2010 @ 8:05 pmYou can say it as much as you want but that doesn’t make it true.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 6/20/2010 @ 8:09 pmgo back to the definition Dana gave:
a country in which the government uses police, especially secret police, to exercise strict or repressive control over the population
“uses police to exercise strict or repressive control’
The only way to enforce the current immigration regime–the only way to ensure that every employee has a “green card” is for the police to exercise strict and possibly repressive control (including relying on informants, searches conducted without warrants, etc.) over the population.
If you think anything less is required, then you are deluding yourselves.
BTW, the necessity of police state methods to properly enforce the immigration laws is one indication of how out of step with reality they are and why they need to be reformed.
kishnevi (7e1f91) — 6/20/2010 @ 8:19 pmkish….quick, check under your bed….
AD - RtR/OS! (71ba66) — 6/20/2010 @ 8:26 pmImmigration has already decreased just because of America’s economic recession. With strict employer enforcement and a requirement that jails nationwide implement the 287(g) program, I think this would be very effective without changing anything the police do … let alone establish a police state.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 6/20/2010 @ 8:30 pmSecuring the border and checking current residents for legality are two different things. Securing the border requires no reduction of our freedoms at all and in fact will make such imposition in our daily lives less important and increase our security.
Dealing with illegals already here are another matter. I think I just read that under Eisenhower we deported 15 million illegals. We also deported millions after WW2 to free jobs for returning veterans. Were we a police state then?
We don’t need draconian measures. Checking criminals for immigration status and deporting them would help with the worst ones. Denying services would also help. Drying up jobs would send many back. All of these would be much more effective with the border secured and in fact would be much less important. Our economy could absorb many more legal immigrants if the flow of criminals was slowed to a reasonable trickle, especially if we stopped shielding and enabling the violent criminals as the “sanctuary cities” do now.
I don’t see where police state measures are called for by anything I have mentioned. I am in favor of immigration but of law abiding people with the old controls of no services except emergency services, a sponsor to accept financial responsibility, and needed skills.
Machinist (497786) — 6/20/2010 @ 8:31 pmThe biggest clue to why there is no enforcement of immigration laws is the opposition by Democrats to proper ID requirements at the polls. It is the same reason they want felons voting.
Machinist (497786) — 6/20/2010 @ 8:36 pm“And for Daleyrocks–immigration controls are government intervention/regulation of the labor market.”
kishnevi – It is interference compared to what we have now, but comparable to what other countries do. What’s your point. I believe I acknowledged the alteration by commenting that the labor market would settle without a constant supply of fresh illegal labor. Sorry if that was above your head. It may not be the type of government intervention you prefer, but I prefer having positive control over our immigration system and borders the way most countries in the world do. This is not rocket science.
daleyrocks (1d0d98) — 6/20/2010 @ 8:54 pm__________________________________________
You seriously the want the amount of government control and intervention found in France and Mexico?
I’ll tell you what. You worry about Mexico, let us and others worry about the United States.
Thank you.
Associated Press, May 21, 2006:
If Arnold Schwarzenegger had migrated to Mexico instead of the United States, he couldn’t be a governor. If Argentina native Sergio Villanueva, firefighter hero of the Sept. 11 attacks, had moved to Tecate instead of New York, he wouldn’t have been allowed on the force.
Even as Mexico presses the United States to grant unrestricted citizenship to millions of undocumented Mexican migrants, its officials at times calling U.S. policies “xenophobic,” Mexico places daunting limitations on anyone born outside its territory.
In the United States, only two posts — the presidency and vice presidency — are reserved for the native born. In Mexico, non-natives are banned from those and thousands of other jobs, even if they are legal, naturalized citizens.
Foreign-born Mexicans can’t hold seats in either house of the congress. They’re also banned from state legislatures, the Supreme Court and all governorships. Many states ban foreign-born Mexicans from spots on town councils. And Mexico’s Constitution reserves almost all federal posts, and any position in the military and merchant marine, for “native-born Mexicans.”
Recently the Mexican government has gone even further. Since at least 2003, it has encouraged cities to ban non-natives from such local jobs as firefighters, police and judges.
Mexico’s Interior Department — which recommended the bans as part of “model” city statutes it distributed to local officials — could cite no basis for extending the bans to local posts.
After being contacted by The Associated Press about the issue, officials changed the wording in two statutes to delete the “native-born” requirements, although they said the modifications had nothing to do with AP’s inquiries.
“These statutes have been under review for some time, and they have, or are about to be, changed,” said an Interior Department official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name.
But because the “model” statues are fill-in-the-blanks guides for framing local legislation, many cities across Mexico have already enacted such bans. They have done so even though foreigners constitute a tiny percentage of the population and pose little threat to Mexico’s job market.
The foreign-born make up just 0.5 percent of Mexico’s 105 million people, compared with about 13 percent in the United States, which has a total population of 299 million. Mexico grants citizenship to about 3,000 people a year, compared to the U.S. average of almost a half million.
“There is a need for a little more openness, both at the policy level and in business affairs,” said David Kim, president of the Mexico-Korea Association, which represents the estimated 20,000 South Koreans in Mexico, many of them naturalized citizens.
“The immigration laws are very difficult … and they put obstacles in the way that make it more difficult to compete,” Kim said, although most foreigners don’t come to Mexico seeking government posts.
J. Michael Waller, of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, was more blunt. “If American policy-makers are looking for legal models on which to base new laws restricting immigration and expelling foreign lawbreakers, they have a handy guide: the Mexican constitution,” he said in a recent article on immigration.
…Speaking of the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who enter Mexico each year, chauffeur Arnulfo Hernandez, 57, said: “The ones who want to reach the United States, we should send them up there. But the ones who want to stay here, it’s usually for bad reasons, because they want to steal or do drugs.”
Washington Times, March 24, 2005:
The State Department says that the Mexican government, angry that a thousand American volunteers will begin an Arizona border vigil next month, consistently violates the rights of illegal immigrants crossing its southern border into Mexico.
Many of the illegals in Mexico, who emigrate from Central and South America, complain of “double dangers” of extortion by Mexican authorities and robbery and killings by organized gangs.
The State Department’s Human Rights Practices report, released only last month, cites abuses at all levels of the Mexican government, and charges that Mexican police and immigration officials not only violate the rights of illegal immigrants, but traffic in illegal aliens.
Although Mexico demands that its citizens’ rights be protected when they illegally enter the United States, immigrants who cross illegally into Mexico “are often ripped off six ways until sundown,” says George Grayson, a professor at the College of William & Mary and a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
Mr. Grayson, who wrote a report for the center on Mexico’s abuses of aliens, says “very little” is being done by Mexico to protect the welfare of the Central Americans and the others who cross into Mexico.
Mexican President Vicente Fox said last week that his government will sue in U.S. or international courts if the volunteers — part of the Minuteman Project, which is designed to protest the Bush administration’s lax immigration policies — break the law.
“We totally reject the idea of these migrant-hunting groups,” Mr. Fox said prior to yesterday’s Baylor University summit in Waco, Texas, with President Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, at which the countries agreed to improve security and unify business practices.
“We will use the law, international law and even U.S. law to make sure that these types of groups … will not have any opportunity to progress,” Mr. Fox said last week.
In response, Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, urged Mr. Fox to respect America’s right to defend its borders and “demonstrate perhaps a little less disdain for the rule of law north of the border.”
Mr. Kyl said Mr. Fox’s “pre-emptive threats” to file lawsuits on behalf of those crossing the border unlawfully “is hardly helpful, since it presumes that illegal aliens have more of a right to break American law than American citizens have to peacefully assist authorities in enforcing it.”
Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican, chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, says Mexico had “raised the bar on chutzpah” by criticizing efforts by the Minuteman volunteers to protest immigration enforcement by the U.S. government.
“Since when are ‘Neighborhood Watch’ citizens ‘vigilantes’?” Mr. Tancredo asked. “President Fox thinks we should tear down the fence that keeps illegal aliens out? Then why doesn’t he put up a welcome sign on his southern border with Guatemala instead of using his military to keep poor Guatemalans out? Such hypocrisy about borders defies historic parallel.”
^ And these reports from a few years ago indicate that not only has the dysfunction and incompetency — and wanton crime and corruption — of Mexico remained intractable, it’s gotten worse.
Moreover, I won’t even focus on the hypocrisy of people in Mexico, such as the current and previous presidents of that country—and, btw, those 2 politicians aren’t even from the flat-out leftwing-socialist part of Mexico’s political scene. That should tell anyone just how idiotic, phony and irresponsible are the prevailing mindset and ideology of our neighbors to the south.
Mark (411533) — 6/20/2010 @ 9:03 pmAnd, let’s not forget all those people moving from the U.S. into Mexico and France for jobs.
AD - RtR/OS! (71ba66) — 6/20/2010 @ 11:23 pmIf we don’t stop them, illegal aliens will will stop crossing the border only when living here is worse than living there.
Liberal Politicans like Obama, Sanchez, Boxer and Feinstein are working hard to make that happen.
tyree (63c76f) — 6/20/2010 @ 11:55 pmkishnevi’s disingenuousness regarding “gov’t control of the labor market” is very telling. It’s nothing but a variation on the “why do you want the gov’t to do something about the BP spill when you’re the folks that want LESS gov’t” meme. In other words, trotting out a stereotype, and in this case it doesn’t even fit a little bit — seeing as how there is absolutely no ‘need’ for undocumented labor in the workforce . . . none.
Icy Texan (30a2d8) — 6/21/2010 @ 3:11 amIt’s a trap. The Left has sold this cow several times before: the _promise_ of securing the border in exchange for a very real and permanent amnesty right now. Does anyone really think the Obama administration will enthusiastically enforce immigration laws just because they’re passed?
Ernst Blofeld (fda24d) — 6/21/2010 @ 8:02 amGeneralMalaise at 14 – When did the State Department hire Alvin Greene (late of South Carolina) as a spokesman?
Have Blue (854a6e) — 6/21/2010 @ 9:01 am